If your contact list is a mess, your marketing is probably a mess too. Whether you're drowning in leads, juggling past clients, or just trying to keep your follow-ups straight, organizing contacts and building real segments is the only way to make sense of it all. This guide is for anyone using Wiseagent who wants their database to actually work for them—without losing hours in the weeds.
Let’s cut through the clutter and get your Wiseagent contacts set up for targeted, practical marketing. No fluff, just what works.
Why Bother Organizing and Segmenting in Wiseagent?
Here’s the deal: sending the same email to everyone is a waste. Buyers don’t want seller info. Investors don’t care about first-time homebuyer tips. The more dialed-in your lists are, the less effort it takes to sound relevant and get responses.
Wiseagent gives you the tools, but it won’t organize things for you. You have to set up your contact lists and segments right, or you’ll be stuck blasting generic messages and hoping something sticks.
Step 1: Clean Your Contacts Before Anything Else
Before you even think about lists, buckets, or fancy filters, do a cleanup. Garbage in, garbage out. If your contacts are duplicates, outdated, or missing key info, your segments won’t mean much.
How to clean up your Wiseagent contacts:
- Merge duplicates: Wiseagent has a “merge contacts” tool. Use it. Don’t put it off.
- Purge old leads: If you’ve got contacts who haven’t engaged in years and aren’t in your sphere, archive them.
- Fill in missing info: The more data you have (email, phone, tags), the better your segments later. Don’t sweat perfection—just do a quick pass for low-hanging fruit.
Pro tip: Export your list and scan it in Excel or Google Sheets for glaring issues. Sometimes it’s faster than scrolling in Wiseagent.
Step 2: Understand Wiseagent’s Core Contact Organization Tools
Wiseagent gives you a few main ways to organize contacts:
- Buckets — Think of these as broad groups, like “Buyers,” “Sellers,” “Past Clients,” “Sphere,” or “Vendors.” Every contact can be in one bucket at a time.
- Tags — These are flexible labels you can stack, like “Hot Lead,” “Open House 2024,” “Needs CMA,” or anything else you want. Contacts can have as many tags as you like.
- Categories — A bit more rigid, often used for things like lead source (“Zillow,” “Referral,” etc).
- Custom fields — For details that don’t fit anywhere else, like “Budget,” “Preferred Neighborhood,” etc.
What actually matters?
Buckets and tags are your best friends. Buckets help with broad marketing (think newsletters), while tags let you get granular for special campaigns or follow-ups.
Step 3: Set Up Buckets That Make Sense for Your Business
Don’t overthink buckets. Too many, and you’ll never remember what goes where. Too few, and you’re back to “everyone gets everything.”
Simple, effective bucket ideas: - New Leads - Active Buyers - Active Sellers - Past Clients - Sphere/Referral Partners - Vendors
How to set up buckets in Wiseagent: 1. Go to your Contacts tab. 2. Find the Buckets section (usually a sidebar or dropdown). 3. Add, remove, or rename buckets as needed. 4. Drag-and-drop contacts, or use bulk actions to assign buckets.
What to skip:
Don’t create a bucket for every little nuance (“First-Time Buyer Sellers With Dogs”). That’s what tags are for.
Step 4: Build Useful Tags (But Don’t Go Tag-Crazy)
Tags are your power tool for segmentation—if you use them right. The biggest mistake? Creating a tag for every random detail. You’ll wind up with chaos and never use half of them.
Good tag examples: - “Open House 2024” - “Newsletter” - “No Texts” - “Investor” - “Price Drop Watcher”
How to use tags effectively: - Tag based on behavior or campaign needs. Did they RSVP to an event? Tag them. - Use tags to mark preferences (“No Calls,” “Email Only,” “Loves Dogs”). - For one-off campaigns, create a temporary tag and remove it later.
What to ignore:
Don’t tag for stuff you’ll never use in marketing. If you’re not going to run a campaign for “Loves Gardening,” skip it.
Step 5: Use Categories and Custom Fields for Edge Cases
If you need to track lead source, referral details, or other info that doesn’t fit buckets or tags, use categories or custom fields. But don’t turn this into another tagging mess.
When to use: - Lead source tracking (so you can see what’s working) - Referral partner info - Niche data you actually use in marketing
How to set up: 1. In your contact’s profile, look for Category or Custom Fields. 2. Add or edit as needed. 3. Run reports or filter by these fields only when it helps you take action.
Pro tip:
If you never run reports based on a field, it’s probably not worth tracking.
Step 6: Segment for Real-World Marketing
Now, the payoff: building actual marketing segments. This is where all the cleanup and labeling pays off. In Wiseagent, you can filter by bucket, tag, or any field to build lists for email drips, bulk texts, or even old-fashioned call lists.
Common, high-impact segments: - New leads who haven’t responded in 30 days (Bucket = New Leads, Tag = Unresponsive) - Past clients for a home anniversary touch (Bucket = Past Clients, Tag = [Year]) - Investors interested in multifamily properties (Tag = Investor, Custom Field = Property Type: Multifamily) - “Open House 2024” attendees for a follow-up campaign
How to segment in Wiseagent: 1. Use the search/filter bar in Contacts. 2. Select bucket, tag, or custom field criteria. 3. Save your filtered list if you’ll use it again. 4. Use this list for targeted emails, texts, or call tasks.
What not to do:
Don’t waste time building segments you won’t actually market to. Start with your biggest opportunities (new leads, repeat/referral clients) and expand as you see results.
Step 7: Build Campaigns for Each Segment (and Track What Happens)
Once you’ve got a segment, use Wiseagent’s built-in marketing tools (or your email platform of choice) to send messages that actually matter to those people.
Best practices: - Personalize where possible (use merge fields for names, properties, etc.). - Don’t send just to send—make sure the message fits the audience. - Track open rates, replies, and conversions. If a segment never engages, rethink the list—or the message.
What works:
Short, relevant messages tied to what you know about that segment. “Saw you at the open house—here’s a market update” beats a generic blast every time.
What to ignore:
Don’t drown people in drip campaigns just because you can. Quality beats quantity.
Step 8: Maintain (But Don’t Obsess Over) Your Lists
No contact list stays perfect. People move, change emails, or simply lose interest. Once a month, do a quick review:
- Archive dead leads.
- Update tags and buckets as situations change.
- Purge bounced emails.
- Ask people to update their info every so often in your marketing.
Pro tip:
Set a calendar reminder for a 30-minute “database cleanup” once a month. It keeps things under control without eating your life.
Keep It Simple—And Keep Iterating
Here’s the bottom line: your contact organization doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be good enough to help you send the right message to the right people, without making you tear your hair out.
Don’t stress about the perfect tag or the ultimate bucket structure. Start simple, see what works, and tweak as you go. The goal isn’t to have a database that looks good—it’s to have one that actually helps you close more deals with less hassle. That’s what Wiseagent is for.
Now get in there, clean up your lists, and send something useful.